Tag Archives: Mitt Romney

Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America is now Ted Cruz’s Contract on America

September 30, 2013 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

Ted Cruz

WHILE WRITING this I received an invitation to Washington. At the end of the message, this: “in case of a federal government shutdown, the event will be canceled.” All these years later, I was left thinking, could it be 1995? Only, Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America is now Ted Cruz’s Contract on America, the intervening years providing sources of irony as well as of discouragement. Mostly however discouragement, as I notice that the Continuing Resolution is a continuous thing, alright, but more like an irresolution.

Politics

For the GOP, it’s 2050 in America

November 10, 2012 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

I HAD JUST finished reading the New York Times article “Republicans Reconsider Positions on Immigration” when confirmation of President Obama’s Florida victory arrived. Had more Republicans heeded the advice of Florida’s Jeb Bush, this article, and the contest it describes, might have concluded differently. Having absorbed this uncontroversial bit of information, Republicans are at last coming around to the Bush and company point-of-view, which ten years ago was summarized as “The Big Tent” and the Party of Lincoln, and whose current mantra is the phrase path to citizenship.

Politics

Why We Learn Nothing from the Presidential Debates

October 18, 2012 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

I‘VE TAKEN IN all the US presidential and vice-presidential debates. Over the years these have become highly rehearsed and scripted affairs, meticulously polished and doubtless focus group vetted and — well, who knows what else the candidates do these days. Computer modelling, maybe. Virtual reality simulations. Testing on non-human animals. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that media experts and pollsters and psychics are also consulted. The result of all this engineering is debate not unlike processed food: enjoyable, but who knows what’s really in it.

Politics

Romney’s the victim of campaigns that reduce issues to cartoons and caricatures

September 18, 2012 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

RUMOURS OF ROMNEY’S demise, to paraphrase Mark Twain, may be premature: but we know already the substance of the obituary should it soon come to that.

Podcasts

Podcast 12: The “Innocence” Video, Salman Rushdie, Peter Lougheed, TTC, Mitt Romney, and more

September 16, 2012 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

• Podcast 012 | Week of 08.16.2012

Download entire podcast (320 kbps mp3).

Politics, World

The Triumph of America’s Booboisie

February 28, 2012 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

WELL BEFORE THE lapsed acronym RINO (Republican In Name Only) was re-popularized by California Reaganite Celeste Greig, Barry Goldwater had taken on the Rockefeller Republican, energizing a contemporary political trajectory whose crowning achievement was announced on July 27, 1980, by journalist Henry Fairlie:

World

What Mitt Romney’s returns tell us about the tax system

January 29, 2012 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

SOME WEEKS ago, having already absorbed a good many of Mitt Romney’s debate performances, New York Times columnist David Brooks noted the tinniness of the former Massachusetts governor every time the subject of money arose. Why can’t politicians talk plainly about money, and why does the subject of income tax yield so much verbal gymnastic?

Religion

Rick Santorum and the Republicans’ Kennedy Problem

January 4, 2012 Wayne K. Spear 1 Comment

ON SEPTEMBER 12, the Democrat nominee for the 1960 Presidential election addressed the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in a speech which begins as follows: